Benjamin Graham is known as the 'father of value investing'

Famed investor Warren Buffett is known for building his empire with this strategy, which he learned from his mentor Benjamin Graham.

Value investing specifically focuses on fundamentals like earnings, assets, and price-to-earnings ratios. In contrast, growth investing targets companies with rapid future potential, often trading at higher valuations. Both strategies offer unique paths to returns.

Buffett is perhaps the greatest investor of all time, and his investing philosophies are highly regarded and practiced around the world. His advice also includes investing in productive assets (like stocks, bonds, and real estate) and imagining what could go wrong before thinking about how much money you could make.

He then bought his first property at 14 years old. From studying under the “father of value investing” to revitalizing a textile company into the largest holding company in the world, Buffett’s career is one of great financial success.

The "Founders" podcast reviews biographies of the world’s top entrepreneurs, and this episode explores a 2012 book about Warren Buffett. The episode includes Buffett's advice on becoming a better business manager and investor.

Buffett is known for his large collection of insurance investments, and Geico is no exception. This is partly due to investments from his mentor Benjamin Graham and a private, impromptu meeting with the company’s future CEO.

The greatest investors have all made a fortune off of their success and, in many cases, have helped millions of others achieve similar returns. Read about the lives and approaches of Carl Icahn, Warren Buffett, George Soros, and more.

Buffett is the former CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, a local resident of Omaha, Nebraska, and a billionaire. People often refer to him as the "Oracle of Omaha."

The late Jim Simons is remembered as one of the most successful (and profitable) hedge fund managers of all time. He went from physically gathering microfilm on commodities pricing decades ago to overseeing a firm that led Wall Street in daily trading volume.

After avoiding investing in tech stocks during the dot-com boom, Buffett's stance on investing in tech was widely criticized. Buffett later shared his thoughts on why he regrets not investing early enough.

In 2024, Y Combinator Cofounder Paul Graham wrote a viral manifesto of sorts about a strategy he calls "founder mode." It's the opposite of what Graham calls "manager mode," which allows founders to hire executives who he says ultimately run the company into the ground.

John Bogle, the founder of The Vanguard Group, created a fund that tracked the S&P 500 in 1976. That fund created an unprecedented opportunity for individual retail investors, brought down fees across the board, and popularized the belief that passive, low-cost index fund investments would outperform actively managed portfolios long-term.

In 2024, Y Combinator cofounder Paul Graham popularized the idea of "founder mode" when he wrote a viral manifesto in response to a talk that Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky gave about leadership styles. Graham positioned the concept of founder mode as the opposite of manager mode—when founders hire executives and middle managers to run their companies and make decisions that Graham says are better left to founders.

In addition to cofounding Y Combinator and other companies before it, Paul Graham is a prolific writer and artist. He chronicled many of his thoughts while building Y Combinator in a series of dozens of candid essays, all of which you can read in an online archive.

Warren Buffett might not be part of the middle class himself (he's one of the richest people in the world), but he still knows a thing or two about everyday personal finance tips. This article chronicles his six best pieces of advice for the middle class.

Y Combinator Cofounder Paul Graham’s former professor’s husband Julian Weber provided $10K in seed funding to Graham’s previous startup, Viaweb in its early days. In exchange, Weber received 10% of the company. Weber’s involvement inspired Graham to start a program where investors were more involved with the companies they contributed seed funding to.

With Class A shares trading at over $700K per share, Berkshire Hathaway's high stock price reflects Buffett's decades of long-term investing, major acquisitions, and a philosophy that has reshaped modern finance.

Buffett said that he would pull back from his day-to-day role leading Berkshire Hathaway at the end of 2025. This long-form retrospective on his career paints him as an increasingly unique American role model.

In Berkshire Hathaway's 1990 Annual Letter, Warren Buffett included an edited version of a letter he sent to a man who indicated he might want to sell his family business. This short letter is a masterclass in selling and differentiating your product from the competition.

Annual investment letters from Howard Marks, the billionaire cofounder of top distressed debt shop Oaktree Capital Management, are required reading on Wall Street. The prolific writer and investor explains the distinction between the folly of trying to time the market and the necessity of paying attention to market cycles. The difference makes all the difference in returns.

As a hedge fund manager, Dalio's investment strategy relies on insulating investments from economic downturns. To do this, Dalio attempts to diversify investments as much as possible while considering the correlation between industries and markets.

Dalio's now-famous principles started out as a collection of rules the finance behemoth set for himself. Since then, the list has expanded, becoming required reading for all Bridgewater Associates employees. In 2017, Dalio published an expanded version of these rules called "Principles: Life & Work," which has sold more than 5 million copies worldwide.

Known for being one of the most frugal billionaires alive, Buffett never spends more than $3.17 on breakfast (opting for either McDonald’s or Oreos). He also has New York Times front pages detailing horrible days on Wall Street hanging on his walls.

Buffett's long investment in American Express is indicative of his highly principled investment strategy. Buffett often invested in longstanding businesses with strong core products and services. As of 2025, Buffett owned around 20% of all American Express stock, and his investment in American Express made up around 16% of his portfolio.

Buffett is worth many, many billions of dollars. As a self-made billionaire, he is the eighth-richest man in the world, and his real-time net worth changes daily.

After buying bulks of its stock, Buffett then flipped Berkshire Hathaway into the most successful and largest holding company in the world, which owns companies like Geico, Duracell, and Fruit of the Loom.

From stocks and index funds to gold, a business professor at Duke University answers questions from the internet about investing.

Brad Jacobs is a serial entrepreneur who has launched eight billion-dollar enterprises during his storied financial career. With companies focused in energy, waste, and more, Jacobs has stuck to a roll-up playbook of consolidating small players into one conglomerate within an industry, a common tactic of similar private equity firms. This podcast from Founders summarizes Jacobs' book detailing his approach.

Dalio's profile, written by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, praised Dalio for his investment strategy and his deep understanding of economics, if unorthodox at times. Volcker particularly appreciated Dalio's support for the Federal Reserve's handling of the 2008 financial crisis. Dalio and Volcker were longtime friends—Dalio has referred to Volcker as "the most principled man" he knows.

David Blitzer, the former index chair at S&P Global, earned the nickname "gatekeeper" of the stock market after helping decide which companies made it into the S&P 500 for 24 years. Blitzer became a legend in the world of indexing and has a reputation for being even-tempered and always wearing a bow tie.

Over the years, Buffett has quoted Yogi Berra and Mae West, as well as country songs and the Bible. Many turn to his letters as a source of inspiration and wisdom.

When Dalio was 12 years old, he worked as a golf caddy at the Links Golf Club. That's where he heard about the stock market for the first time and decided to invest in Northeast Airlines—the only stock he knew that was selling for less than $5 a share. Dalio ended up tripling his profit and became fascinated with the stock market—ultimately laying the foundation for his legendary career as a hedge fund manager.

In a 1999 shareholder letter, Bezos wrote, "I constantly remind our employees to be afraid, to wake up every morning terrified. Our customers have made our business what it is, and we consider them to be loyal to us – right up until the second that someone else offers them a better service." Motivated by fear, the entrepreneur advocates consistent innovation, experimentation, and improvement to create a better customer experience.

College endowment managers long held to the traditional allocation of 60% domestic stocks and 40% bonds. But Yale’s David Swensen developed a new approach: deprioritizing low-risk fixed income and liquid assets in favor of alternative investments to leverage endowments' long-term investment horizons and capture the “liquidity premium.”

So generous that in 2010 he pledged to donate 99% of his money. He said this money “can have a huge effect on the health and welfare of others.” This letter is Buffett’s philanthropic pledge, which details his commitment to giving and how luck and privilege helped him accumulate so much money.

Developed by Charles Dow in the late 19th century, Dow Theory argued that markets move in trends. Its principles—confirmation, trends and volume—still influence technical analysis today.

Each year, Berkshire Hathaway’s shareholder letters are eagerly anticipated by employees and Buffett fans alike. A resource lists every single letter from 1977 and is great for anyone seeking a peek behind the curtain into Buffett’s brain through years of stock market booms and busts.

Stanford University professor Frederick Terman used to encourage his students to start their own tech companies. His advice led to the creation of Hewlett-Packard. He also established the Stanford Research Park, which helped develop many successful tech companies today. Terman is often called the "Father of Silicon Valley," because his ideology directly shaped the region's development.